Jeeves, On Reflection, Part 1
by CliveLive49
Summary: Mr. Wooster likes to undress in front of the full-length mirror in the corner of his bedroom. Very, very angsty.
1. Chapter 1

Mr. Wooster likes to undress in front of the full-length mirror in the corner of his bedroom.

I assist him with the details. The untying of his bow-tie. The unbuttoning of his dinner jacket. The removal of his shoes. Then I make myself scarce. I glide to and from menial, night-time tasks, catching glimpses of his emerging vulnerable form in the periphery of my vision.

I hear snatches of idle reflection reverberate from his room. He talks half to me, half to himself.

'Bally rum business, this, Jeeves.'

'Yes, Sir?'

'Women.'

'Women, Sir?'

'Women, Jeeves. Specifically, their inexplicable and bally mystifying fondness for the Wooster Person. I always assumed that in order for an engagement to go ahead, things should be in the nature of a... a reciprocity. If that's the word I'm looking for. The beazles in my intimate circle, however, seem to hold little stock by such criteria.'

'I would tend to agree, Sir. It is a most unfortunate and infuriating state of affairs.'

As his verbal meanderings peter out, I pour him a nightcap and proceed to his bedroom, where I find him in bare feet and heliotrope pyjamas, staring at the turned-down bed like an uncertain diver on the high board. I press the brandy and soda into his hands and hold up the edge of the covers, and watch the look of relief and purpose wash over his face, as though to say, 'Ah. I understand. They're bedclothes, and I must climb under them,' before he slides between the sheets.

In this manner, most of our evenings pass without significant incident.

Last night, however, was anomalous and disconcerting.

It had passed three in the morning before Mr. Wooster returned, and despite his nocturnal disposition, I must admit that worry had been gnawing at the edges of my consciousness for the past half an hour. I had made some attempt to occupy my mind with Spinoza, however, I found myself more than usually distracted by a vague sense of concern for my master's wellbeing. I know not why. He had left just before ten to attend Mr. Finknottle's birthday celebrations at the Drones Club, and he seldom returns from such occasions before four am.

It was something of a relief, therefore, to hear the prolonged, staccato rattle of his key in the lock, followed by a low sigh of defeat and the dull thud of his body against the other side of the door. I laid my book on the side table and crossed to the door, turning the inside latch and opening it slowly. He swung inwards with the door, his limp form supported by the wood, and then lurched forward into the flat, steadying himself with one hand on the wall and the other on my elbow. I tried my best to remain stoically and impassively in place.

'I say,' he said, blinking and peering at me with an unsteady gaze. 'Jeeves. What're you still doing up?'

I closed the door behind him and watched his slow, unsteady progress down the hallway.

'I did retire, Sir,' I said, 'but found that sleep eluded me.' I picked up the white scarf that had fallen from around his shoulders and hung it carefully on the hat stand. 'I trust you had an enjoyable evening?'

'Not sure,' he said. 'Might've done. Came away early. Wasn't feeling too...' he groped around for a word as he extended a hand to grasp the bedroom doorframe, '...Good.'

I came up behind him and helped him to remove his coat, holding it patiently as he wriggled his arms from the sleeves with great drama and effort. I hung it over the scarf on the coat stand and returned to his side.

'I'm sorry to hear that, Sir,' I said. 'Do you plan to retire, now?'

'I should retire, Jeeves,' he said, his voice undulating meaningfully, as though he were reciting Shakespeare. 'I should retire. You should retire. We should all retire.'

'I do believe that's wise, Sir,' I said, stepping into the darkened bedroom after him and reaching for the light switch. His hand came down upon mine.

'Leave it,' he requested, and then let out a sudden and almost amusing hiccup, followed by a small burp and a deep intake of breath. 'Couldn't stand light, at the moment.'

'Very good, Sir,' I said, moving to turn down the bedclothes.

When I turned back to him, he was standing in front of the full-length mirror, swaying only slightly in place, his chin high, like a child waiting for praise.

He was, in fact, waiting for me to undress him.

I crossed to him carefully in the dim light.

'Sir,' I requested, 'If you would turn ninety-degrees to your right, I will undo your bowtie.'

His expression remained earnest, and he continued to stare into the reflected image of his own eyes. He neither responded, nor moved as I'd asked.

I considered placing a hand upon his shoulder to turn him, but could not bring myself to do so.

Instead, I stepped behind him, and brought my hands up and over his shoulders to undo the tie. I am very slightly taller than him, and could easily look over his shoulder at our reflections to guide my movements.

I loosened the knot, working firmly and gently with my forefingers, middle fingers and thumbs, and drew the two halves of the tie apart.

'Thank you, Jeeves,' he said, as soon as it had loosened. 'You're a good man.'

I let the undone bow tie fall to lie against his shirt and moved my hands down to undo the shirt buttons.

My arms around him seemed to make him suddenly claustrophobic, and he suddenly struggled to free his own arms from the circle of mine, jabbing his elbows out and knocking my arms aside. Then, just as suddenly and insistently, he brought his arms back down outside of mine, trapping my elbows against his ribcage, my forearms sticking out towards the mirror, my wrists limp like a marionette.

'Thank you, Jeeves,' he repeated. 'You're a good man.'

A strange, oppressive atmosphere began to descend over the two of us.

I, then, began to feel trapped. Not only by Mr Wooster's arms holding mine tightly to his sides, but also by our doubles in the mirror before us, peering at us with their dark hollows of eyes, eerie and intimidating in their stance and proximity.

I gently moved my elbows until I had a little space and leverage, and then began once more to undo his shirt buttons. I could see very little in the dim light, though when I looked straight into the mirror before us, I could feel his reflected gaze upon mine, curious, grateful, muddled, but somehow still purposeful. Ardent.

When I reached his bottom shirt button, he brought his hands down over mine. The backs of his hot, damp palms shocked my dry knuckles. I felt quite unusually as though he was touching a far more significant and private part of me, like my face, my stomach or the small of my back. I drew in a sharp breath, though he didn't seem to notice it.

This, I believe, was the moment when everything shifted and changed. Rearranged itself slightly, like a dealer shuffling cards before he deals the next game. It was a game I didn't recognise. I was unsure of the complex set of rules.

'Just... I think...' said Mr. Wooster, and his voice was otherworldly, '...I wonder...' and he brought my right hand down to the front of his trousers, dragging the tips of my fingers over the buttons there.

I drew in a sharp breath, and felt my own hands grow as hot as his.

I felt, not as though I were dreaming, improbable as the circumstance was. I felt more as though I were under the influence of ether. Caught in one of those strange, frightening moments on the surgeon's table, just before you slip under, when you become paralysed, and for the fraction of a second before you lose consciousness, you picture the surgeon's knife and the clean, weeping split of our own flesh and decide that you don't want to be operated upon, after all. Yet it is too late to do anything about it.

'Don't you ever... wonder,' he said, '...Jeeves.' He kept his hand upon mine, soft, but insistent. 'Don't you?'

I remained silent.

I could feel the hidden heat of him beneath his trousers. It was an alien sensation. When I breathed in, I felt my chest touch his back, and the part of my chest that had touched it, too, grew hot.

I have only been intoxicated twice in my life. In the first instance, I was sixteen, and working as a page boy at a school for young ladies. A fellow page boy on the staff stole a bottle of whiskey from the stable hand. I knew that it had been stolen, but shared it with him one night, in our quarters, after our duties for the day were complete. I vomited all night into our cracked chamber pot, as much from the shame of the theft as from the shock of the hard liquor. The second instance was three months ago, during my annual leave in Spain. On the third night, I found myself unable to relax, and to quiet my galloping thoughts I drank four small glasses of a local liqueur in the bedroom of my hotel. I became very much aware that I was intoxicated, and immeasurably glad that no one could see me.

Now that feeling – slightly elated, sick, at once trapped and free – stole over me again. This time, however, I was in Mr. Wooster's presence. He could see me. I could see him looking at me.

'I sometimes wonder,' he said, his voice as dreamy and reflective as it usually was of during his evening ritual of undressing. 'I sometimes wonder if you... do the same things I do.'

'I'm not sure I quite understand you, Sir,' I said. My voice was not quite my own.

'I'm not sure I quite understand _you_, Jeeves,' he replied, still cupping my hand, still holding my gaze, but now turning his head ever so slightly towards mine, so that the hair on the right side of his head tickled against my ear. It smelled of brilliantine and the soft cotton bristles of his hairbrush. 'Do you do the same things I do?' He shifted his feet apart slightly. 'Do you do... what I think you must do?'

'What do you think I must do, Sir?' I asked. I felt unable to do anything but repeat his own phrases back at him.

'At night...' he elaborated, '...When you're all alone, in that room, with your books.'

The 's' of 'books' was horribly slurred and drawn-out, and set my teeth on edge like nails on a chalkboard. I felt myself shuddering slightly with the supreme effort to remain still in his grip.

'And your brain...' he went on. 'Do you...' He suddenly and quite forcefully squeezed my hand. 'Open the buttons, man,' he said.

Lord help me, I did.

When all four of them were undone, he took my hand again and tucked it inside, using it to push aside his underclothes and press my fingers around his hot, hard length.

'Do you pull yourself off, Jeeves?' he asked, the words released from him with this irreversible physical action.

I let out a little sound at that, involuntary and surprised, at once embarrassed, indignant and another hot, almost scalding emotion I couldn't quite identify.

'Do you wrap your hand around your cock?' he asked, as he wrapped my hand around his. 'Do you lie with your legs spread and your head back in your pillow and your hand pumping your cock...' He dragged my hand along his length, squeezing it more tightly, beginning to move his hips in a steady rhythm, remarkably sure and controlled for one as obviously intoxicated as he was. I could feel the sock of skin shift liquidly over his hardness, and when my knuckles brushed the tip of him, I could feel moisture seep from the head.

I moved forward ever so slightly, perhaps accidentally, perhaps intentionally. The front of my trousers came into contact with his buttocks.

'Do you...' I saw now, as I peered into the mirror, that his eyes were closed, and his mouth was slightly open, exposing his tongue, which was glistening wetly, the tip resting on his bottom lip in between his words, '...Do you think about cooks and servant girls and waitresses? Do you think about ties and hats, tailcoats and the seams of trousers? Do you think about Spinoza? Do you think about Aunt Agatha? Do you think about...' here he faltered, bending his knees slightly and then straightening them, letting me feel the crease of his buttocks all along my length, which I noted, with some detachment and vague sense of discomfort, was hard. Harder than I had ever known it to be. 'Do you think about the Young Master? Do you ever think about what I might be doing? And that I might be thinking about you, whilst I'm doing it?'

At that he turned his face back into my neck and buried his nose there, breathing rapidly and deeply, as he sped the movements of my hand to an impossibly blinding pace, jerking his hips relentlessly until he let out a violent breath, moist and vocal, into the hollow of my neck and spent himself onto the mirror, painting the glass with long white ribbons of himself.

'Sir,' I said, unable to think of anything else to say. 'Sir.'

He drew my hand from his trousers.

'Sir,' I said again, as he turned in my arms and sank to his knees, dragging me down with him, his hands on my shoulders. My knees hit the floor with a dull thud, and I felt a shock of pain dance up to my thighs. For a moment he moved his own face so close to mine I could feel his breath against my dry lips, and I thought he intended to kiss me. Then he pushed me back onto the floor in such a rough manner that my head hit the carpet quite hard, knocking me sick for a moment, as I felt him claw at the clasp of my trousers. I felt helpless and anaesthetised as he drew out my member, taking it into his warm hands and, a second later, into his hot, animated mouth. He pulled and sucked, working his tongue around and around me, hollowing his cheeks, dragging his lips along me, singing low in the back of his throat and setting my whole body trembling. I could feel acutely that he had never done such a thing before. His gusto was that of someone trying an exotic food for the first time and finding they enjoy it.

I had never experienced anything like it.

He moved his head up and down, working me like a lever around a fulcrum, pulling back to mouth my circumcised head, making me shiver and gasp, then forcing his mouth down upon me to the root, so that I wanted to snap inwards on myself like a sprung hinge, or curl up like a shocked anemone. He tightened the ring of his lips, and I brought my hands up to push him away or pull him closer to me – he snatched my hands in his and tugged them forcefully down to the floor, pressing my fists against the carpet until I could feel the loops of fabric leave their tattoo on my skin.

'Sir,' I said again, fearing that I sounded repetitive, impotent and unintelligent.

He pulled back, kneeling between my legs, and the shock of his mouth leaving me was almost as great as had been the first contact.

'Jeeves,' he said, his mouth red and wet. 'I've got your cock in my mouth.' Although, indeed, he hadn't at that moment. The strange inaccuracy of the statement should have been amusing, but it was not. In the least. There was a thin string of saliva running from his bottom lip to his chin, which made my stomach clench with a ripple of disgust. I was relieved when he swiped at it with the back of his hand, his arm limp and heavy. Then he stopped to undo his cuffs. My heart hammered in my chest as I watched him become suddenly engrossed in this minute activity, raising his right wrist to his eye and fiddling with the cuff link as though it were the most important thing in the world at that very moment.

'Sir...' I said, 'What in the world are you...'

He ignored me. I looked past him, at the strings of mess on the mirror, and at once found the courage to sit up. I snatched his hands in mine, tugging them towards me, and feeling for the cuff links. I have undone his cuff links innumerable times, though now, I found my hands were shaking, and I began to struggle, the small opal stones slithering out of my grip with the sweat on my fingertips. Mr. Wooster introduced his hand into the effort, and together we tore at the cuff until it fell apart, the cuff link skittering off under the bed. We moved to the other cuff, undoing it with just as much clumsiness and desperation, and then he rolled his sleeves up past his elbows, leaving his forearms glistening from the sweat spread by his palms.

I was still in my full valet's uniform.

Before my thundering heart could slow, he had slid back down onto his stomach, his legs bent at the knee, his shins parallel with the mirror and his shoes knocking against the soiled glass. He took me back into his mouth. I shifted so that my shoulders pressed back against the bed, the small of my back aching, but the dull throb overridden by the intense sensations in my lap.

I threw my arms forward and took handfuls of his hair, mortified at the liberty, but completely and utterly unable not to. I clenched my fists, feeling the hair grow damp in my hands, pulling and pushing his head into the rhythm that suited me, keeping him moving, keeping his mouth on me, keeping him from sitting up and taking it away again.

I knew the very second before I was going to spend. I cared not – nor did I even give thought to – whether I would do it in his mouth or not, and kept my hands in his hair, holding him down on me, as I felt my release drawn out of me and down his throat. I am certain that I did not speak or make a noise, though I was aware that throughout my breaths were rapid, panting, shallow and fevered. He did not splutter or pull back in shock. He simply swallowed, his mouth relaxing, a small liquid 'click' sounding at the back of his throat, his tongue convulsing, pressing me against his soft palate.

I grew lightheaded. I released his hair. I became intimately conscious of the feel of his spongey tongue pulsing against the underside of my softening length.

When he drew away from me, a fresh string of saliva snapped down onto his chin. He did not wipe this one away. I considered doing it for him, though it felt somehow too intimate.

He stood up first, dragging himself onto the bed and falling backwards on top of the covers, turning to bury his head in a pillow. I gathered myself and stood slowly, feeling my knees click, tucking myself away and fastening the front of my trousers. I brought a hand to the back of my head to smooth my ruffled hair.

I felt at once exposed, as though I were onstage before an audience. But when I looked at Mr. Wooster, his eyes were closed and his breathing was steady. He was asleep.

I did not finish undressing him. Nor did I pull the covers over him.

I did fetch a damp cloth and clean the mess from the mirror, very thoroughly.

Then I retired to my own bedchamber.

We have not spoken of this incident in the day since. At eleven o clock, I brought his breakfast, and he ate it quite cheerily, no trace of awkwardness in his demeanour. At one, he went out to lunch, and at two he returned, partook of a brandy and soda and sat at the piano to belt out three of his new favourite songs. At six I prepared his dinner, and between each mouthful he chattered to me amiably about the antics of his Drones club companions.

Now he sits on his chaise lounge, reading the final chapter of his latest mystery novel.

I hang on tenterhooks. Walk on eggshells. I wonder why, and how, and whether it might ever happen again.

I try not to think of what happened, even as I grope for the answer to any of these questions.

After I have helped him to bed – the routine as expected and mundane as it ever was – I shut myself up in my room, with my books, and my brain. I undress and get under the sheets without pyjamas. Lying on my back, in the dark, in the quiet, I pull myself off. I do not think of cooks or serving girls or waitresses. I do not think of ties and hats, tailcoats and the seams of trousers. I do not think of Spinoza, or Aunt Agatha. I do not think of the Young Master. I do not think of anything.


	2. Chapter 2

I prefer to undress at the foot of my bed, facing the wall. I remove each item of clothing methodically, with precision, without looking. I do not keep mirrors in my bedchamber. It doesn't give me any real pleasure to see my unclothed form slowly revealed to my own eyes, and to the empty room.

I wear blue and white striped pyjamas, of which I have three sets, all identical. I look down only briefly at my member before pulling on my nightclothes.

Tonight, as I slide between the sheets, I wonder at the unnerving impulse to get up and turn the lock on the door. It makes no sense to me. I do not feel vulnerable or in danger. But I'm suddenly overcome with a desperate need for privacy.

Almost a week has passed without incident. Each morning I help Mr. Wooster dress, and each night I help him undress.

Nothing discernible has changed, apart from his laugh. He laughs as often and as heartily as always, but there is something brittle in it – like you could smash through its gaiety with the tiniest pressure.

I know he remembers.

I do not press him. Nor do I wait patiently. I walk around carefully, growing slowly more exhausted and dazed, refusing to give the slightest inkling that I feel this way. Every answer I give to every question, every movement I make, every word I speak to him, every brandy I pour him is exactly, deliberately as it was before that strange night.

At night, however, after I retire, I feel this new need to lock myself away. I do not. If I were to do so, it would be to admit that I am doing something I want to hide.

For I am. I turn off the electric light switch, pull the sheets to cover me and pull down my pyjama trousers almost immediately. And then I pull myself off, as precisely, methodically and mindlessly as I undress myself.

All the time the unlocked door towers over me, ready at any moment to crack open and reveal my indiscretion.

It is two in the morning. Mr. Wooster has not been out at his club, though he went to bed quite intoxicated from the seven brandy and sodas he'd requested throughout the evening. He'd entertained himself at the piano since nine, belting out gay popular tunes, his voice becoming slightly more off-key as the hours wore on. At around midnight, he'd said,

'Do go to bed, Old Thing, if you're tired.'

I hadn't felt able to rest, however, until he did. So I remained quietly in the background, dusting and polishing every surface until it shone, rearranging cushions, fixing his drinks when required.

Twice he asked me to join in with a chorus, and twice I refused. After the second refusal he seemed to grow bored and disheartened, and decided to retire.

Now I turn over in the dark, feeling the cool shift of the bed sheets against my bare feet.

I am hovering on the edge of sleep when I hear the door handle turn. The hall light must be extinguished as well, for no shaft of light cuts across the blackness. I hear the door close again, and know he is in the room with me.

For long moments he is perfectly quiet and perfectly still, but I am aware of his presence as keenly as if he were shouting or dancing. I can smell his aftershave slightly and, very faintly, the sweat from under his armpits. It disturbs the perfect equilibrium of my room.

'Jeeves,' I hear him say, at last, not bothering to whisper. 'It's bally dark in here.'

In response, I let out a breath. I imagine he can see my large, indistinct shape beneath the covers, rising and falling softly with the movement of my lungs.

'Do you think I might turn on a light?' he asks.

I turn over to face him at that. He is a dark outline against the pale door.

'I'd prefer it if you didn't, Sir,' I request.

'Right,' he says. 'Right right right. I suppose I won't then.'

I hear him take a step, and then another, and expect for a moment to feel the bed dip with his weight as he sits on it. Instead, I hear the creak and groan of antique wood, and realise that he has rested his weight against the closed doors of the wardrobe directly opposite my bed.

'Sir,' I say, sitting up in bed, 'Are you having trouble sleeping?'

'No no,' he says, again using his daytime voice – loud and clear as a bell – without regard for the unearthly hour or the pitch darkness of the room. It tears through the blanket of gloom like a pair of tailor's scissors. Everything feels all wrong. He is not supposed to be in here. 'No,' he repeats. 'I mean, I'm _not_ sleeping. But I'm not having trouble in the forty-winks department. I could toddle on back to my room and sleep, if I so desired. Lie back down, Old Thing. Don't sit up on my account.'

It feels quite unsuitable, though, that I should be supine in his presence. I remain seated, my body bent at the waist, my legs still straight, my heels hanging just off the end of the mattress.

'Do you require anything, Sir?' I ask, though it seems a redundant question.

He doesn't answer.

'Please,' he says, 'Lie back down.'

Eventually, I do. I don't know what it is that I fear. That he will pull the covers away, exposing me? That he will come to lie on top of me?

When he speaks again, his voice is quieter. Less casual.

'I just want...' I hear him inhale and exhale through his nose. 'I just want you to... carry on, Jeeves. Carry on as you normally would.'

I am lying flat on my back, stiff as a board, looking towards the ceiling, which is invisible in the darkness.

I expected that something else would happen between us, before long. I did not think it would be this.

'Sir,' I say, 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Yes you do,' he says. 'I mean I want you to do what we talked about. In front of the mirror. I want you to...'

'Please, Sir,' I say, 'This is too...'

I believe this is the first time in my life that I have left a sentence hanging in mid-air. And it does. It remains in the air between us, unravelling in all its possible ways of ending, taking its time in dissolving into the dark.

'Come along, Jeeves,' he says, at length. 'I want you to do it.'

I think that perhaps, because we cannot see each other, we are not truly doing this. We are in the ungodly time between midnight and morning and anything we do will perhaps pass away like a dream.

It is this that makes me decide. This, and the fact that I am stunned, curious, trembling with the danger and the strangeness of this unexpected course of events.

I reach underneath my pyjama bottoms and take myself in my hand. I can tell from his intake of breath that he knows I have done it.

'Turn on the light,' he requests.

'I would prefer not, Sir,' I say. I begin to move my hand along my length. Slowly. Listening to the soft rustles the bedclothes make.

'You're doing it, aren't you?' he asks, his voice eager.

I harden suddenly and painfully, unable to keep my mind blank any longer. I see him there, in my mind's eye, watching me with dark, curious eyes and a wet, open mouth, fascinated and aroused by my actions.

'Yes,' I say.

'You're touching your cock.'

I arch my head back into the pillow, in uneasy pleasure and a species of disbelief. That I am doing this. In front of him. For him. At his request. Just as I might pack his things for a trip to New York, or send a telegram of acceptance to an invitation.

'Yes, Sir,' I say. 'I am.' My breath comes faster and louder.

'Turn on the light,' he requests.

'I'd prefer not,' I reply, in between hitching, panting breaths.

'Oh my Lord, Jeeves,' he says, and I hear the wood of the wardrobe creak again, first once, quite loudly, and then more steadily and quietly, in rhythm. My hand is hot. My palm is sweating, mixing with the fluid that leaks from me. I can feel him looking at me.

'Turn on the light,' he requests again.

Coaxed into it by his soft, persuasive voice, I reach out with my other hand and pull the cord to the bedside lamp.

And he flickers into being before me with incredible sharpness, his trousers pulled down to just below his member, his hand working himself furiously, his eyes wide open, on mine.

I look down at the covers – the rapid movement of my hand disturbing them into billowing waves. I feel myself about to come off. It seems that he is close, too.

I stand, pull up my trousers and before I can think what I am doing I am in the hall outside my bedroom, shivering slightly in the colder air. I close the door, shutting Mr. Wooster into my bedroom.

I keep my hand on the handle, holding it closed. The handle rattles from the other side, first quietly, then more insistently. Then desperately. Still I hold it.

'Jeeves,' comes his muffled voice at last from the other side of the door. 'Jeeves, what the hell are you doing, Man?'

I keep hold of the handle.

'Jeeves!' he says, quite sharply. 'This isn't funny.' As though I ever thought it might be. 'Let me out this instant! Have you lost your marbles?' I hear him thump on the door with his fists. Then he goes quiet.

I realise with a start that I am holding the handle with the hand I used to touch myself, and pull it away suddenly, looking at the brass to see if I have left any stain. I haven't. I walk quickly to the kitchen and wash my hands with soap and hot water.

Then I walk into the living room, unable to go back into my bedroom, and unsure of where else to go.

I feel at once as if I am dreaming and wide awake. When I turn on the electric light, every colour in the room stands out – every curl on every pattern on every vase, every stitch on every cushion on every chair. I made the shine on each and every surface, but at the moment they look alien and unfamiliar, incongruous as I am out of my uniform in the middle of it all. I am in the living room in my pyjamas.

I hear Mr. Wooster open the bedroom door, and turn to stand beside the drinks cabinet, my hands clenched by my sides, my chest rising and falling rapidly. He appears at the end of the hall, his pyjama trousers pulled back up. Then he begins to undo his pyjama buttons from the bottom to the top. The sides of his pyjama top hang to frame his torso. He has no hair on his chest. It is flat, pale and smooth, like a boy's, and his pectoral muscles are only slightly developed. His nipples are as pink as cat's noses. I recall the warmth of his skin. The peculiar feeling of my hand around his prick. The vaguely stomach-churning sight of his mess strung across the mirror.

For a minute or more, we simply look at each other, the tension in the air thick, our flesh crawling with the things we want to do to each other. Finally, he says,

'Fix me another drink, would you, Jeeves?'

I turn away and reach for a cut glass and the brandy bottle, and as I lift the lip of the bottle to the rim of the glass, I glance up in see in the reflection in the window that he is approaching. Then he is even closer. Then his reflection is hidden behind my own.

Then his teeth come down on the back of my neck, just below the hair at the nape, and bite down hard, surrounded by the hot, wet ring of his lips, and he sucks hard enough that I fear he will rupture my skin. His chest comes forward to press hard against my back and his arms come around me, undoing my buttons now, from the top to the bottom.

I do not drop the glass or the bottle – I place them both deliberately down on the cabinet, the chink of glass on glass slicing through me as keenly as his bite.

When my buttons are undone, I wrench my neck away and turn in his arms, clutching at him experimentally, amateurishly. Our bare chests meet. My stomach is slightly more pronounced than his, and it flattens against his solid flesh. The whole of my front feels immersed in liquid heat.

I kiss first his neck with an open mouth, then bite down upon his jaw, and then our mouths come together quite hard and untidily.

This is the second time in my life that I have kissed someone. When I was eleven, one Summertime I played for an entire day with the ten year old daughter of my Mother's best friend. We did all the things that children usually find pleasure in. Exchanging marbles, climbing trees, making fortresses out of discarded timber and branches broken from dead trees. Before it came time to go home, we went behind the derelict cottage on the outskirts of the village. She showed me beneath her skirt, and I took down my trousers in exchange. Then we replaced our clothing and pressed our closed mouths together for a long while, imitating some strange idea we had of romance – something we had seen in moving pictures or read about in books stolen from our parents' top shelves.

This is quite unlike that first kiss. I am grounded – alive and aware. I feel everything keenly – every movement of his thick tongue against my own, every touch of his teeth against the soft flesh of my lips. I can smell our combined saliva. The bitter aftertaste of soda moves from his tongue to mine. It does not conform to any idea I ever had of the romantic. I do not think either of us had any idea that something like this was within us – we've blundered upon it quite by accident, and cannot quite get a grip upon what precisely it is, or how we should proceed. Any other combination of circumstances and we might have carried on just as we were, missing this strange situation by an inch and completely unaware of its possibility. If, for example, Mr. Wooster had had one fewer drink that night last week. If he had, would we be groping blindly and clumsily at each other tonight?

We are both still erect beneath our trousers, and I feel our privates meet, pressing against each other with an almost painful friction.

He drags me towards the chaise longue and pulls me to sit down with him, our mouths coming apart noisily as we tumble onto the chair. I fall backwards, he on top of me, and he licks at my nipples until they are shiny and swollen.

'Jeeves,' he says. 'I never thought it... But I'm afraid I can't...' He takes down his pyjama bottoms, and my own, kicking them off the end of the chair. He parts my legs, moving in between them, pressing my left knee, bent, against the back of the chair, and moving my right leg so that it hangs off the chair's edge, my foot on the floor.

He licks at his fingers and spits on them, feeling between my buttocks, working the tip of his ring finger into my hole. I gasp at the intrusion. My lower body squirms and jerks.

He sits back on his haunches and takes his prick in his hand, a distant and inward expression upon his face, as though he is about to write a serious letter. Then he makes to press himself inside me, but I am too tight and tense, and he has barely slipped the head in before he is forced back out. He tries again, but the angle is wrong, and he misses entirely. I feel at once a sense of failure and immense relief. With a growl of frustration, he places his cock between my thighs and uses his hands to press them together hard, rutting into the hollow between my legs, beneath my own erect member.

I look down at my cock. It is flushed and shining, the head raw and aching. This is the longest I have ever looked at it. Mr. Wooster is looking at it as well. Intently. He uses his hand to squeeze it in long, tight strokes. He leans forward and licks around the head with the very tip of his tongue – it feels sharp as a knife.

He lets it go, and I take it into my own hand.

My breaths are thickening, becoming louder, harder and more vocal against my will. My voice box rumbles with an astonishing groan.

'Oh Dear God' I say. I clench my teeth together, and through them I say, 'Dear God in Heaven.'

He is bent forward. I can see the white line where his hair parts.

I spend hard against his neck, the second before I feel his wetness spread between my thighs, running down the crack between my buttocks. It is as warm as blood.

After he gets up unsteadily and tucks himself away, I lift my right leg onto the chair and straighten my left. I sit up gingerly, mindful of the mess beneath me.

He goes to the cabinet and drinks the brandy in the glass, though I hadn't added any soda. Then he replaces the glass on the cabinet, crosses the room and goes back into my bedroom.

When I enter the bedroom, my nightclothes back in place, he is going through my wardrobe. I feel more exposed than he has made me feel all night.

'These pj-s are very plain, Jeeves,' he says, with a note of rebuke in his voice, fingering one of my two spare sets of nightclothes, which are folded on the second-top shelf. 'Not unpleasant,' he hastens to add, 'But plain.'

'Sir,' I request, with more sharpness in my voice than I intend, 'Please stop going through my things.'

He replaces the pyjamas, closes the wardrobe doors and turns back towards me.

'Sorry,' he says, unapologetically. Then, quite vehemently, he says, 'I'm not an invert, Jeeves.'

'I never thought for a moment that you were, Sir,' I say.

He moves his head in a barely perceptible nod.

'Jolly good. I'm...' he tilts his head towards the bedroom door. 'I'm going to sleep in my own bed, what?' he says. 'You too? I mean... in yours?'

'I had intended to, Sir,' I say. 'I will see you in the morning?'

'Jolly good,' he says. 'Jolly good.' He leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind it.

I cross to it and turn the lock.


	3. Chapter 3

I have not visited the Ganymede Club in several weeks, but I go there tonight. The regular members seem pleased to see me. I was wont to visit the Club at least twice a week, and my absence has puzzled them. They ask what has kept me away. Have I had a family tragedy? Have I taken a long vacation? Has Mr. Wooster been abroad?

I give an uncharacteristically implausible excuse. My schedule, I say, has been more than usually hectic, and that Mr. Wooster's whims wilder and more time-consuming of late. It takes me a moment to realise that the implausible excuse is not a lie.

I play a long game of chess with Mr. Dawkins. He is valet to Lord Barnsborough. I am black and he is white. The first hour of the game is uneventful and mind-numbing, until I seize the opportunity to Queen him with my Knight and proceed to Checkmate in seven moves. I take no real pleasure from my win. As we play, I drink a glass of '21 Bordeaux slowly, feeling my muscles loosed and my face grow warm.

I think more of Mr. Wooster than I do of Bishops and Pawns. I think in particular about the fact that he has gone through my wardrobe and seen that all my pyjamas are the same. The thought leaves me sweating slightly.

After I have beaten Mr. Dawkins, I take my place at the large table with Mr. Green, Mr. Darlington and the other Senior Members, and listen to the meandering, quietly reflective conversation. I do not participate.

I drink a second glass of Bordeaux, and begin to feel slightly sick.

I find myself missing him terribly. Not just his company, or his conversation, which, if I am honest with myself, is neither articulate nor profound enough to sustain my interest for long. I miss most of all his physical proximity – the peculiar tension that has arisen between us when we are close. The smell of his clothes and his aftershave. I cannot bring myself to label this Lust, though I know it must be something akin to it.

I wonder too what he is doing at this moment. I have never thought particularly about what he does on my evenings off. I imagine he has gone to his club. I cannot picture him occupying himself alone in the flat, without anyone to tend to him or pick up after him.

Have we really become so inseparable, our lives so intertwined, that neither of us can function away from the other? For I am feeling equally unable to relax without his presence, without pouring his drinks. Without knowing he is no further away than the next room, in the bed, or in the bath, or at the baby grand.

A terrible, arrogant part of me thinks that he is unworthy of me. I think deep thoughts and I enjoy intellectual pastimes. He skims across the surface of life like a flat stone over deep waters. He makes great, frothing splashes, but never delves beneath the skin of the water. I sometimes wonder whether he will make it across entirely to the opposite riverbank in this way, or whether he will run out of momentum and sink straight to the bottom.

All around me they are talking of the eccentricities of their masters – their strange habits and amusing idiosyncrasies. Mr Davies reveals that his gentleman has taken to wearing spats. Mr. Green's Master has begun to sing Gilbert and Sullivan tunes in the bath. Mr. Darlington's man has demanded artichokes for dinner three days in a row. I feel a sudden, wild urge to announce,

'My Master, you know, has developed the strangest of eccentricities. He takes my hand and puts it into his trousers. He's wont to come into my room of a night to watch me abuse myself. And, most amusingly of all, he tries to bugger me on the chaise longue.'

Mr. Davies offers me a third glass of wine. I accept, my instincts and common sense blurred at the edges through the rose-coloured tint of the first two.

The club disbands at midnight.

I know that I am unsteady as I descend the steps to the street. My movements are a great, slow effort, and I find myself making them more precise – more definite – to compensate. I fight desperately for some measure of control. I will not breach decorum in public, least of all amongst my friends at the Ganymede.

I bid them farewell with an almost-steady voice – almost perfectly crisp consonants. Then I lick at my numb lips and wonder how on Earth I managed to do so.

I cannot go back to the flat intoxicated. But I do not know where else to go.

As I open the front door to the flat, I have a moment of blinding clarity, when I feel perfectly myself, perfectly alert and sober. By the time I close the door behind me, it has passed, and I feel unsteadier and more out-of-control than ever.

Before I can reach my bedroom door, I am distracted by sounds from behind the closed door of the water closet.

I open the door, and fear I rather fall through it. I am engulfed at once in the humid atmosphere of the bathroom. I can feel the moisture drawn into my lungs with each breath. Mr. Wooster is in the bath, lying back idly, not washing himself.

He sits bolt upright at my entrance. On the edge of my consciousness, I am somewhat astonished that he has drawn his own bath.

'I apologise, Sir,' I say. I steady my feet on the damp, slippery tiles. 'I apologise.'

'Jeeves,' he says, looking at me with some concern in his eyes. 'Are you quite alright?'

'I believe I am, Sir,' I say, 'Though I am not entirely certain.'

'I say, Jeeves,' he says, at once, without judgement in his voice, but with a note of surprise, 'Are you under the surface?'

'I do not know what to say,' I say. And then add, as an afterthought, 'Sir.'

'Good Lord,' he says. 'You are. How on Earth did that happen, Jeeves?'

He knows precisely why I am acting so peculiarly. He has no real right to ask, and I can tell he is thinking this, even as he makes moves to ask me, looking at me with increasing disbelief.

'As I say, Sir,' I say, 'I apologise.' I walk to the toilet with precise steps, close the lid and sit down upon it. 'I fear this may be not entirely hygienic,' I say, my thoughts tumbling from my mouth before I can check them, 'However, I cannot remain standing any longer.'

'Of course,' he says. 'Of course. Sit down, my Man. Do sit down.'

'Do you require help bathing, Sir?' I ask, unable to rein in the instinct to offer him service. There is something I intend behind the question, though, and I hope he hears it.

He plucks his rubber duck from where it bobs between his legs and places it in the soap dish. Then he looks at me earnestly.

'Jeeves,' he says, 'I worry that this might rather be all my fault.' He looks stricken. 'Am I right?'

'No, Sir,' I say. 'No no. Not at all. Do not think it.' I say this without sarcasm or bitterness, though I know it is entirely untrue. Immediately, indeed, I contradict myself by saying, 'I have been thinking of you all night, Sir.'

'Have you?' he asks.

'I have, Sir,' I say.

He shifts slightly in the bath, his skin squeaking against the porcelain with an almost human squeal.

'What...' he moves his legs, straightening them as much as he can within the bath, looking at his feet. '...What have you been thinking?'

'About what you might be doing, Sir,' I say. 'Have you taken your dinner?' I ask, quite urgently, suddenly concerned that he might be hungry.

He ignores the question.

'What have you been thinking?' he asks again.

'About you and I, Sir,' I say, 'And what has happened between us of late.'

He stands up, the water falling away from him like a torn coat, running down his chest and his legs in rivulets, leaving him glistening.

His skin seems to steam slightly.

I stare brazenly at his body. His skin, flushed an angry pink from the hot bath water. His half-erect cock pointing up towards the vanity mirror above the sink, the foreskin retreating.

I never imagined that the sight of another man's privates could stir me so.

'I feel it necessary to tell you, Sir,' I say, 'That I am not an invert either.'

'Well, by Jove, Jeeves,' he says, as though I have said something horribly out of line. 'I mean to say...' Then he says something entirely surprising. 'To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't care if you were secretly part-giraffe.'

I have never laughed at anything he has said before, regardless of how deliberately witty or inadvertently hilarious.

At this, however, I begin to laugh quite hard, and am quite regretful that it is the hard, drunken species of laughter that seems to imply disdain and superiority. I really do not intend it to be.

He looks at me with a worried expression, as though he fears he might have broken me.

'We'll find some way of managing, won't we, Jeeves?' he says. 'I mean, it won't be impossible. I've become rather attached to you, you see. I can't imagine...'

'-Nor can I, Sir,' I reply, before he can finish.

He goes out to his club, and returns at four in the morning, completely sober. I too am now completely sober, but the night remains clear in my mind – a series of sharp-edged, twinkling memories more distinct than any I keep tucked away in my mind.

I help him undress before the full-length mirror in the corner of his bedroom, standing behind him, looking into the reflection of his eyes, he looking back at me. I attend first to the details. The buttons on his waistcoat, his bow tie. He sits on the edge of the bed for me to untie his shoelaces. I remove his shirt and his trousers, and then his underclothes. I dress him in his pyjamas.

'I say, Jeeves,' he says. 'I mean to say... Would you like to come to bed with me?'

I smile at him.

'I believe I will retire to my own bed, Sir,' I say. He nods, not particularly disappointed and perhaps a touch relieved. I walk to the door, and turn back to add, 'But thank you for the offer, Sir.'

'Not a problem,' he says, slipping between the sheets. 'Good night, Old Thing,' he says.

He turns over in the bed, curling up to hug his pillow. When I look at him directly, he looks like a gentleman, carefully attired by his valet in the most expensive of heliotrope pyjamas. When I look at him in the mirror, he looks like a child, vulnerable and small, smothered by the luxurious covers.

I know that I will take perfect care of him for the rest of his life.


End file.
